


i will shield you from the waves (if they find you)

by Marianne_Dashwood



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Brainwashing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Rule 63, THEY'RE JUST IDIOTS I'M SORRY, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Uprising Spoilers, fem!Hermann, fem!newt, genderflip, harold..., i'm fixing everything uprising messed up and you can fight me on this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-14 02:02:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14125725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marianne_Dashwood/pseuds/Marianne_Dashwood
Summary: Newt may be lost, but Hermann won't ever give up on her former lab partner. She will get her back, no matter what.





	1. there’s a madness (that's just coursing right though me)

**Author's Note:**

> SO I SAW UPRISING AND HAD SOME FEELINGS ABOUT NEWT
> 
> Inspired by this: http://hgedits.tumblr.com/post/172289967957/femaesthetics-uprisingnewt-geiszler-why-would
> 
> If enough people like this, I might end up making this a multi-chapter full on fix-it with post-recovery shennanigans, but I really don't have time for that committment at the moment - But I do wanna do it! Uprising gave me a lot of mess to clean up. If I do then the tags will probably be expanded, as will the character list!
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy this, and please, please comment saying whether you want to see more!
> 
> EDIT: I am now making this a multi-chapter! Hope you guys enjoy!

She doesn’t think that she’s breathed in ten years. She’s not sure exactly - her thoughts used to be ordered, compiled and dismissed between breaths, a mess to everyone but herself (to everyone but herself and _her),_ and now she knows how her professors, her colleagues felt. How _irritating_ it is that her thoughts are jumbled, incoherent, how she can barely maintain a sentence on her own anymore.

No wonder they all hated her. No wonder every single one of her lab partners left her, alone and babbling like the madwoman she was.

It made her blood fucking _boil_ , how they would look down on her for her unwashed hair and loose ties and inked arms. They all _hated_ her, why shouldn’t she try and take revenge for that, why shouldn't they all _pay_ for every single second they ostracised her for being a _stupid little girl,_ for _loving_ what she did instead of hating them like the rest of the world, for being a fucking _kaiju groupie_ -

She blinks. The anger bubbled inside her, rose up roaring, but it wasn't hers, it _wasn’t hers, no, no, no no no no not again, get out of my head,_ **_get out of my head-_ **

**_WE WON’T LEAVE. YOU INVITED US IN._ **

“ _No…”_ Newt whispers, and there are tears in her eyes, dripping down her cheeks, and blood in her mouth that isn’t hers, and she doesn’t know where she is, she doesn’t even know if she’s speaking aloud or if this is all in her head. “...Please. _Please_.”

**_YOU ARE A PART OF US NOW. ONE WITH US._**

“No!” She can’t breathe. She can’t breathe because something, _something else_ , has control of her airways, her whole body, why can’t she move her fucking _body_? Theres a voice in her head, not just in her head, but all around her. Smothering her.

Drowning her.

It feels like her thoughts are being torn to shreds. Like ribbons. When she was a child, and she couldn't stay still in class, she would pull out the ribbon that her mother had put in her hair and tear it apart, string by string. Her thoughts, her ideas, her mind, she’s watching them fall to the ground. Useless without being part of a whole. Useless now they've been pulled away from everything that mattered to them.

She’s alone. So alone, and yet, she can _feel_ them, curling and ever present in the corners of her mind. A terrifying reassuring presence. She doesn't want to be alone, alone like string that’s meant to be a part of a ribbon, alone like the only girl in her class to get a doctorate in kaiju biology, alone like she always _always_ was until

**_UNTIL WHEN? YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN ALONE. NO ONE HAS CARED FOR YOU. NO ONE DOES. NOT AFTER WHAT YOU’VE DONE._ **

But what had she done? Her head hurts. The voice in her head sounds familiar and foreign all at once. Grating and soothing. The Drift is calming, a reassuring presence.

Warmth, and fire and destruction. Revenge for everything they did to her us. They deserve to have their cities crumble, their spirit broken, their metal machines that destroyed the only thing you ever loved, do you remember, _they’re the reason you’re alone with us._

_Wait._ she thinks _Wait, no, that’s not what I want, this isn't what I wanted!_

Even as she thinks the words, they unravel in front of her. She can’t hold onto a thought anymore. They’re sorting out her thoughts for her, cutting and pasting their words on top of hers, and she can’t tell the difference between hers and the monsters in her head.

Because in this moment, Newt knows what they really are. Monsters. The ones that almost destroyed the planet, if she hadn't helped stop them, and to do that she let them into her head, she let them in, in the pursuit of knowledge, in a desperate attempt to _feel_ close to someone again. There are monsters in her head, and she put them there because -

**_YOU DON’T HAVE TO FEEL ALONE ANYMORE._ ** **_SHE_ ** **_MAY HAVE LEFT YOU, BUT WE NEVER WILL._ **

**_WE WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU._** **_DON’T YOU WANT TO FEEL THAT AGAIN? OUR GIFT?_**

She tries to think, tries to fight, fight like she has whenever she gains these small slithers of conscious, rational thought again, but she can already feel herself drowning again.

_No, no knowledge is worth this. My mistake isn't worth this. I didn’t want to be alone, but I didn’t mean_ **_this!_ **

She focuses with all she has on what she has left, on what they haven’t yet stripped from her in trying to use her like an empty puppet.

_Hermann._

The familiar feeling of the Drift, of chasing the RABBIT washes over her, and she ignores the fact that this should be impossible, is she even hooked up to anyone right now?  
  
(Ghost Drifting: taking on the traits and personality of a co-pilot after drifting with them. Increases with each subsequent drift. Subjects report feeling as if they are still connected to their partners even when outside of the Drift - Newt, Newt, you fucking _idiot_ why didn’t you remember this, why didn’t you think of this, you _knew this would happen)_

She’s standing in the Shatterdome and she’s ten years younger, and she’s watching the celebrations around her with a mix of elation and bemusement and… grief? She saved the day, she and Hermann made this happen but there is her entire life down the drain too, all her research, all the hours and months and years of her life… gone, when the kaiju are.

But it doesn’t matter, because in that moment, Hermann is next to her, and they’re both basking in the glow of their achievement. The other woman is smiling awkwardly, leaning on her cane and brushing her hair out of her eyes so she can look around at the celebrations.

Their eyes meet and, fuck, Newt has never been embarrassed in front of her collegue, but, then again, she had never drifted with her before. Now all of her…. Embarrassing secrets are out in the open. It was always going to be impossible to hide her feelings in the Drift, and even with their mission, even with the third of their Drift going to the infant kaiju, they were always going to be obvious. The flushed cheeks that she had always attributed to the fact that she was hauling around kaiju guts all day, the butterflies in her stomach that she told herself were down to her irregular eating habits, the real reason behind them was now apparent, to both herself and her… colleague doesn't really fit, her… partner?

She doesn’t expect Hermann to talk first, but she does “Newton-”

“You don’t have too… We don’t have to talk about anything right now, can’t we just, celebrate, Herm? And not think about work, for once?” She doesn’t want this conversation right now. She’s never been very good with these kind of things, these kind of feelings. She’s always felt every emotion too much, or not at all. She knows she can be overwhelming, in everything she does. Hermann has been the first person not to leave her, even after sharing a lab with her for years. She talks too loud, and too much, and she’s always, always too much, and that has never boded well for any kind of… romance.

She knows what her answer will be.

“Newton, we need to talk.”

She has been firmly ignoring Hermann’s gaze, but now she turns to look at her. “Not here, not now, okay Herm? We just won the war, this can wait!”

Hermann reaches over and puts a hand on her shoulder. The contact is sudden, unexpected - Hermann has a rule against PDA, afterall, not that they ever really needed it before.

“In the Drift, when we… what I saw...”

She cuts her off by shrugging her hand off her shoulder, face burning, and immediately wishing that she hadn’t removed her only source of warm comfort as her stomach feels like it’s freezing over. Newt already knows what she’s going to say. In a way, she’s always known.

“We both know what you saw, just, get it over with already.”

Hermann fiddles with her cane. Newt has never seen her so… lost for words. She’s seen her partner angry, irritated, frustrated, elated… she’s every single part of her in the Drift.

And, fuck, she loves her. Even in this moment, she loves her.

“Newt.” She says, her voice quiet amongst the backdrop of celebrations, but it still echoes in Newt’s ears. “I don’t wish to lead you on, but I-”

“I got it.” Newt interrupts, without even realising it. Her mouth is dry, and her whole body feels like ice. “You don’t have to say anymore, I, I know. I should have known from the start, Hermann, and, I’m sorry you had to see that, any of that.”

She’s backing away now, out of the control room, away from Hermann, because if she started breaking down now, she won’t stop, and she can’t, she _won’t_ do this in front of everyone.

They’re already staring, she knows it, even if she can’t see it, and _god_ she’s used to being stared at but this is different, this is even worse, and she has to _get away._

“Newton!” Hermann calls, and Newt notes the renewed use of her full name, and she _hates_ it.

She watches the memory of herself flee the control room, watches Hermann stand by and let her, helpless and hopeless and _useless._

She cleared out her lab that day, she remembers. She avoided Hermann with a dedication of self-control that she didn’t even know she possessed. She avoided her until she left, and, slowly the occasional cursory wellbeing text petered out, the professional emails stopped, after a few years.

And yet…

Even drowning in monsters and voices and hunger and power and greed, lost and broken as she is, she still loves her.

She loved her and, look what happened. She lost her damn fucking mind. This is officially the worst rebound ever.

That... that wasn't funny, was it? What would Hermann say if she saw what Newt had become?

Shocked, yes. Angry, definitely. Upset? Maybe. Maybe she wouldn’t even care at all. Maybe she stopped caring when Newt walked out of that room ten years ago.

Maybe this was all Newt’s fault after all. This is all her fault, and she never got a chance to apologise. Never made the effort before the precursors slithered their way into her brain, and twisted her thoughts into a tangled, fraying mess.

_God, Hermann, I’m so sorry, I’m so_ **_sorry_ ** _, I…_

… What was she sorry about again? Ribbons, she was thinking about ribbons. Ribbons and backdoors and the mix of organic and metallic and… Oh yes. She knew what she had to do. So she wouldn’t be alone anymore. There’s a blissful smile on her face, even if she can’t feel it. Someone else is talking in her voice, but that’s okay. She isn’t alone. They aren’t alone.

They lean over her desk, and get to work.


	2. nothing more cruel than to be loved by everybody (but you)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter has been edited a little more, so if you've read most of it twice, I apologise!

There’s purple and green blossoming around her throat and that’s the least of her worries. Hermann barely remembers the last few days (except for the parts that replay in her mind in a glass carved, perfect replication) and she’s fairly certain that being awake for more than 72 hours with barely a few snatches of sleep here and there isn’t good for her.

In fact, she _knows_ it’s not good for her, because it’s like the final days before her thesis presentation again, and she knows it’s bad because she stops feeling the building ache in her leg, which is a surefire way to know that when she does actually get some sleep, it’s going to hurt like hell to get out of bed.

But she can’t sleep. It’s more of a protest really. It’s, not really about her work and how many people are reporting to her now, and how many people are _relying_ on her, now. It’s about the broken girl in the cell five floors below her, the broken girl that she sees every damn time she closes her eyes, the broken girl they haven’t even let her see yet.

She should have known, Hermann should have known, when her nightmares got worse. When the nightmares changed from ones where she just wasn’t fast enough to outrun a kaiju, when they changed from the pure rage and violent blue of the precursors world where she was totally and utterly alone except for that _anger_ in her mind, she should have known.

She should have called Newton two years ago, when she first had that last, most terrifying nightmare.

Blue. The bright, unmistakable blue of the Kaiju’s blood, the blue that had so often stained her lab floor, and for once, in those dreams, she wasn’t drowning in it.

Instead, she’s always watching someone else. Newt, her eyes desperate and terrified, her face covered in the blood. Clawing, trying to pull herself out, but there is nothing, _nothing,_ for her to hold on to, and she’s slowly sinking.

“Hermann!” She chokes out, frantically reaching up for her. “Herms, Hermann, _please_! Help me!”

“Newton!” She always does the same thing, even as she knows in the back of her mind that it's failed before and it will fail again. Hermann reaches down, hand extended, as desperate as the woman sinking in front of her. “Newton, take my hand!”

“I can't -” Newt lifts one hand, trying to push into the slime to get enough momentum to push herself out. But, this only results in her hand sinking in faster into the sea of neon blue, and Newt panicking faster. “Please, Hermann, help me, they've, they've got me, **_please-”_ **

There's something behind her voice, something that _isn't Newt,_ like a chorus of voices, the hint that this isn't all as it seems, that something is horribly, terribly wrong. She ignores it, focused on this impossible scenario, and saving her. Her, and nothing else.

“I'm coming, I'm coming, Newton, but you've got to reach up, you have to take my hand!”

She’s close enough to see the tear tracks down Newt’s cheeks, the only glimpse of her pale skin under the stain of kuiju blood. She's should be close enough, she just has to reach out a little more-

“Herm-!” She gasps, barely keeping her head and one tattooed arm above the blue, spitting out the stuff that gets in her mouth, but she's drowning, she’s sinking faster and faster and she's _just out of Hermann's reach._

_“_ Newton!”

Hermann feels their fingers brush against each other, and in the dream, it feels like an electric current runs through her body for just a second, for the length of time that their hands barely touch.

And then Newt slips, slips into the sludge with a terrible finality and the last thing that Hermann always sees before she wakes, what haunts her when she isn't dreaming, are Newt’s eyes, terrified, _betrayed_ , before they disappear below the surface, and all that's left is blue.

She should have _fucking_ known. Hermann should have called, emailed, texted, sent a carrier pigeon, _something,_ something that wasn't sitting in her lab staring at Newt’s contact on her phone and wishing she knew what to say to bring her back.

Two years ago. Maybe her dream meant nothing, and she was overthinking this in the wake of recent events. Maybe, as the control on Newt got stronger, maybe they started affecting _her_ too, in her subconscious nightmares.

The third option, she doesn't dare think about. Because if she does, she might never forgive herself.

As exhausted as she is, there is a prickle in the back of her mind that she knows, with a certainty that she normally only reserves for her theorems, is Newt.

It’s been there ever since they saw each other again, since that first awkward, stilted conversation after ten years apart.

It’s now that Hermann has to wonder whether she was really talking to Newt at all during that time.

No, she knows exactly when she last talked to Newt. She remembers terrified eyes replacing cold anger. She remembers a voice full of regret and pain and exhaustion.

_“I’m sorry, Hermann. They’re inside my head.”_

She remembers not being able to breathe, and an ache in the back of her mind.

She’s still there, Hermann knows it. She _feels_ it. Now, it’s just a case of persuading Ranger Pentecost without sounding like she’s gone insane.

“Doctor?” The voice makes her jump, lost in her own thoughts as she was. The young cadet that Jake drifted with was hovering by her elbow.

“Ah, yes, sorry, I was… thinking.”

The girl raises her eyebrows (annoyingly perceptive, that one) and gestures to the staircase.

“Jake- I mean, Ranger Pentecost, wants to see you. Downstairs, with um…” She trails off, suddenly looking uncomfortable.

Hermann wonders what rumours she’s heard that make her unable to finish her sentence. Still, it’s progress. Progress on how she’s going to get her Newt back. _Her_ Newt.

The force of that particular thought gives her pause. Wow. She hasn’t had that thought in a long time.

“Of course.” Hermann says, shaking her head to try and clear it, and beginning to make her way to the lift. (She insisted on using lift, Newt always called it an elevator. How many times had they argued about that? When had been the last time?)

The lift took just enough time for Hermann to have a minor panic attack and pull herself out of it, breathing heavily, her knuckles white as she clenched her stick.

She hadn’t seen Newt since she had tried to kill her. They hadn’t let her see her when she was first brought in and she had to wonder whether there was a good reason.

After all, she too had drifted with a kaiju. A baby one, sure, but Newt had only drifted with a part of a brain, and that, and _this_ had happened. What had changed? There was a missing part of the equation that Hermann didn’t know yet, something vital. Once she knew it, she could rewrite it. Add herself in. Isolate Newt, and save her. Solve the problem. That's all she had to do - solve the damn problem, like she solved the drift, like she solved the kaiju’s double event.

Every step along the dark corridor in the brig was loud, echoing. They only had the brig as a matter of formality. It was for rowdy cadets in a fight that went too far, or went out of bounds when they got drunk, maybe, for a ranger that stepped out of line in front of a superior officer. It wasn't made for this. It wasn’t a place for Newt. And, every step she took brought her closer to her.

Of course it was now, as she rested a pale white knuckle on the door, ready to knock, that she wondered whether she really wanted to do this. Whether she was ready to see the thing in Newt’s body that surely lay behind this door.

She had too. There was no other way. She had to gather the data right from the source, or she would never be able to solve the problem.

And besides, any pain that came from seeing Newt like this, she deserves. Because _her friend_ is feeling it a hundred times over, and she just stood by and let it happen.

Hermann took a deep breath and knocked, once, twice.

Jake’s voice was uncharacteristically serious as he called her in.

The floor of the darkened room is carpeted, and for a moment Hermann wonders why, in the absence of the usual sound of her cane, before she looks up and sees the two way mirror in front of her, the light streaming in illuminating the silhouette of Jake Pentecost, thumbing though files, and in the mirror, through the window is, is -

Hermann doesn’t realise she’s gone to the window, one hand up against the glass, until she’s there (as if Newt, the real Newt, could even see her), and Jake has a hand on her shoulder.

Before he even begins, she speaks in a low determined voice “Let me see her.”

“I wish it was that simple-”

“Yes it _is.”_ She hisses, eyes still fixed on the figure strapped to the chair in the middle of the room and _god_ she’s looks even worse than she imagined. Newt is bruised, pale and ragged, sitting limply in the chair, glassy-eyed. There’s a cut on her cheek that no one has bothered to patch up, her right eye is turning a violent shade of purply-green (to match the bruises on her throat), and her hair, instead of being pulled into her usual messy bun, hangs around her shoulders, greasy and haggard looking. Her clothes, dirty and bloodstained, just, hang off her. Newt was never good at eating regularly, and she doubts anyone has cared enough to bring her something to eat. She’s even got a busted lip, to top it all off.

Strangely, absurdly the only thing she can think in that moment is: _She needs her glasses. Where did they go?_

There’s a man in there too, clipboard in hand, listing off questions in monotone; presumably they’ve been repeating this routine for a while. With differing levels of violence, judging by the look of Newt’s face

There’s a churning in Hermann’s gut, like she’s going to be sick. She thinks, for a hot second, that she might actually throw up, right then and there, on Ranger Pentecost’s shoes.

“We can’t risk you, Doctor.” Jake, for his credit, does sound apologetic. “But I need you to have a look at this.”

“I’m already looking at her.” Hermann says, every word taut with tension. “What the hell have you been doing to her?”

“Interrogation.” He replies “But it’s not exactly yielded any results so far. At first we got vague threats, then silence.”

Inside the room, Newt stirs, lifting her head and focusing on the room around her.

“But, Doctor, that isn’t what we want you to take a look at.” Jake says. “We’ve recovered some… information, from her apartment.”

He hands her a file, and Hermann finally, finally, takes her eyes of the woman in front of her to look down.

If she thought what she was looking at was bad, this is even worse. She’s not sure she even takes a breath for a minute as she flicks through the pictures and diagrams with shaking hands and increasing horror.

“We sent a team to investigate.” Jake informs her “They came back with this… and, whatever the hell that thing is.” He points to the photograph that makes Hermann feel the sickest, because she knows that brain, she’s seen it in her lab, their lab, and what’s worse is the name scrawled on the top of the tank.

“They’ve taken it to K-science, it flew in maybe an hour ago. We’re hoping your team can take a look at it, and the machine that came with it.”

“A neural uplink.” Hermann’s voice is distant, even to herself.

“Several.” Jake corrects. “Old models were scattered all over the place. It… it looks like this has been going on for a while.”

Her heartbeat is ringing in her ears, and there’s a buzzing in the back of her brain that she can’t quite shake. “Ten years.”

This is it. The missing variable. “They must have, infected her, somehow, back when we drifted, and, it’s her, because she did it _twice_ , oh god, Newton, _what have you done?”_

“Wait, wait, wait-” Jake looks at her disbelievingly. “You really drifted with it? I thought that was just a myth.”

“Her.” Hermann corrects. “And the kaiju. We… It was how we got the information to close the breach, and the second time we shared the neural load, but the first time Newton did it alone.”

She finally looks up at Jake. “That’s why you have to let me in. I’m the only one with any chance to get through to her. I _did_ get through to her.”

Jake shakes his head. “I really am sorry, but, we can’t have you going in there. Not right now at least. Not if there's the slightest possibility of you being infected with whatever the hell is in _her_ head.” He gestures towards Newt, who is now looking directly at the glass. Like she knows she’s there.

Newt, the thing that _very much isn’t Newt_ , smiles, and very casually says in the middle of one of guards questions: “How many of your friends did we kill?”

The man freezes, lowing his clipboard. “I’m sorry?”

Not-Newt leans forward in the chair, well, as far as she can before the restraints stop her, and it's a move that she’s seen Newt do a million time, but this is wrong, it's all so wrong, because whenever Newt did it it was because she had something _good_ to share, and her smile is cold and calculating instead of excited, and _god,_ how didn’t she notice this before?

“How many. Of your friends. Did this woman. Kill.” Not-Newt rolls her eyes. “Come on, you’ve got an old worn uniform, it’s not hard to figure out. This woman, right here,” She points inward, at herself. “Let those things back in. We, personally, pointed those drone kaiju towards this base, knowing that people were going to die.”

“That’s the most it’s said that since we brought it in.” Jake says, stepping towards the glass. “What’s changed?”

Hermann presses her hand against the glass again.

The man slowly puts down the clipboard, stepping forward to the chair, to the smirking Not-Newt, his whole body tense.

Next to her, Jake picks up some kind of microphone. “Step away from it, it’s trying to gode you!”

The man reaches up, and pulls out his earpiece.

“Oh, touched a nerve, did I?” Not-Newt laughs, and the worst part, is that it still sounds exactly like her. There’s a faint ringing in her hears, and a weight in her chest and if she wasn’t frozen in place watching this shitshow, if only she could _move._

Not-Newt tilts her head, watching the man as he takes another step towards her. She doesn’t seem perturbed by the fact that all she’s doing is making him angrier. Maybe that's her intention.

“Shit.” Jake says. “This isn’t good.”

He says something else, into a radio, perhaps, but Hermann isn’t listening. She’s got her eyes trained on Newt.

“How many?” She asks again. “One, two, three-?”

The man’s hand clenches into a fist.

Not-Newt’s grin grows bigger. “Three it is. What were their names? We’re sure Newton here would just _love_ to know.”

And Not-Newt turns, and looks straight at the mirror, _directly_ where Hermann is, and doesn’t break eye contact as the man swings his fist directly at her face.

“No!” Hermann shouts. She isn’t even aware she did it at first, only when Jake looks at her strangely as he shouts into his radio for backup.

She can hear boots thudding in the corridor outside, but all she can do is watch, helplessly, as he continues to pummal at Not-Newt’s face, and all the time, _she’s still laughing._

Blood is dripping from her mouth, and her nose is definitely broken, but she’s still laughing Newt’s laugh, high-pitched and emotionless and _cold._

“Stop it!” Hermann grabs the mic that Jake had used before. She can’t just sit around and do nothing anymore. “It wasn’t her, it wasn’t her, _stop it!”_

The man keeps punching, and doesn’t react, not until the guards bust open the door and drag him out, kicking and flailing.

Newt reacts. She’s still laughing, but there is something behind it, something that wasn’t there before. She spits out a mouthful of blood, and, though the glass, meets Hermann’s eyes. The buzzing in the back of her mind gets louder.

Oh no.

“Heyyy, Hermann!” And it sounds like Newt, it sounds like _her,_ like they’re back in the lab and she’s just walked back in after a coffee break. “I was wondering when you’d drop in for a visit.”

“How the fuck…” Jake trails off as the door in the cell locks behind the retreating guards.

“I’m not sure I like what they’ve done with the place, a bit too drab and cold for my tastes. Nothing like our lab, huh? You remember that, right? Because she sure does.” Not-Newt smiles wide, teeth stained with blood.

“You made her think she’d been forgotten, Herm. That she was nothing. That the only other option was to run back and try and have another breakthrough.” She laughs, choking on the blood in her mouth. “All of this was her. Mostly her. All we did was give her a little nudge.” Not-Newt makes a motion with her hand, to illustrate her point, and Hermann was reminded, intimately, of how Newt would gesticulate with her motions, how she would be so animated, so enthused about whatever was on her mind in that moment. Newt’s motions, right down to her last mannerisms, had been appropriated by a monster.

Not-Newt pouts. “No answer? Are you ignoring us? Just like you ignored every single one of her calls for help over the years? Man, I knew you were cold, but, this is a whole new level!”

Hermann holds onto her walking stick like a lifeline, knuckles white and her face taut.

“Let me go to her.” She says, fighting to keep her voice steady. “She reacts to me, you need to put me in there. She needs _help,_ not a torture chamber!”

“She’s riling you up!” Jake says. “You go in there, and I can’t trust you not to do something that could endanger us all!”

“I won’t do anything to her that might endanger this base!”

Jake shakes his head. “I’m not worried about what you might do to her. It’s what she might do to you. Out, Doctor Gottlieb, or you will be escorted out.”

Behind the glass, Not-Newt has started laughing again.

She shakes her head, not taking her eyes of Newt, and Jake sighs. “Doctor. I promise you, I will get you in there. Just, not now. Clear your head, we’ll clean this up, and I promise, you can come back. I think at this point we'll try anything.”

Hermann finally tears her gaze away from the laughing, bloodsoaked woman in the other room. “I want your word, Ranger.”

Jake searches her gaze, before nodding. “You’ve got my word, Doctor. Now go.”

As Hermann turns, reluctantly, towards the door, he leans over, picking up his radio again. “I need a med team, down in the brig, now!”

She makes eye contact, one last time, though the polished glass. The person that isn’t Newt smiles at her, blood dripping down onto her shirt.

In the back of her mind, she thinks she hears something. Her name, maybe. Or, maybe it’s just her imagination.


	3. interlude - you are doomed (but just enough)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newt dreams of blue, cold floors, and her.

 

Sometimes she is conscious, and sometimes she isn’t. She doesn’t remember her awareness stopping, but she always realises it when it returns to her. 

This time around, the first thing she’s conscious of is the floor she’s lying on. Which is, in of itself, unusual. Her head hurts. Instinctively, she puts her hand to her head with a groan and- what?

Why is it surprising that she can move? Feel her loose hair in her fingers, the pounding in her head, blood dripping from her nose on to her shirt.

“Fuck…” She mutters, and, again, that's a surprise. Why is talking a shock? Her biggest shock should be that her hair is down, loose around her shoulders. It’s never loose. She hates it loose. Doesn’t she?

Why is it hard to think? Does she have a hangover? And where the hell is she?

Newt opens her eyes, and she’s in her lab.  _ Their  _ lab. 

It’s the lab at Hong Kong, the last one, because the two of them cycled through so many labs during their time together, but it always felt the same. 

As far as she can tell, slumped on the floor by her work station, it’s exactly how she remembers it. Empty cartons of take-out, one side of the room irrevocably messy and the other ordered, a kaiju organ on her worktop and a chalkboard full of equations that are only barely decipherable to Newt. Everything’s the same. 

Except for one thing. 

Hermann isn’t here. 

What the hell happened? If she had gotten drunk in the lab, there would be bottles everywhere. Maybe she managed to make her way here before crashing… but, her official quarters (not that she ever slept in them much) are much closer to the Shatterdome’s unofficial bar than their lab is.

She tries to stand, gripping onto the edge of her workbench to try and push herself up, but her legs barely support her, and she crashes back to the floor again, crying out as she twists her ankle underneath her. 

She’s exhausted, and she’s barely moved. How is she so tired?

Newt is gazing around the room in confusion, wondering where the hell Hermann is, what time of the day it is, and whether she should consider calling for help, when her eyes alight on the gently floating specimen in a dark corner, and a stabbing pain goes through her mind.

Images begin to flash past, things that she remembers seeing but not doing, and things that she remembers doing but she doesn't remember  _ why,  _ oh god, oh no, no, no, no no  _ no-  _

Years of working, hiding, twisting her own research into something diabolical, unable to _stop_ , looking in the mirror and seeing someone else stare back, making plan after plan after plan, catching fleeting moments of consciousness, hoping that someone, anyone will notice that something’s wrong - and suddenly _she_ is there, and she wants to reach out, hug her, but she can’t, she manages to get out a sentence about coming for dinner ( _please Hermann, please, hear me, hear me you’ve been in my head you know there’s no one else out there for me_ ) before control is wrestled away from her again - not that she ever really had it - Watching a helicopter fall out of the sky - _No, no Mako, no! -_ and there’s a giant kaiju tearing apart the city and she cheers when one of the jaegers goes down, ( _no this is all wrong, no, please)_ , plan b, what the hell is plan b -

Her hands. Wrapped around her best friend’s throat. 

_ I’m not strong enough _ she thinks, and they use her mouth to say the words. It’s her fear that makes her voice shake -  _ well done, Hermann, you figured it out, finally, finally, please,  _ **_see me_ ** _ \-  _ and the next thing she knows, she can feel a heartbeat fluttering under her fingertips -  _ touch, touch, she hasn’t felt anything in so fucking long -   _ Hermann isn’t fighting her, why isn’t she fighting, they’re squeezing her neck tighter and tighter, but Hermann’s eyes are locked with her own and she’s gently brushing a finger on the back of Newt’s hand. She can feel tears in her eyes - _ she can feel -  _ and she manages to choke out a sentence, her first aloud in years, her voice cracking; “I’m sorry, Hermann… They’re in my head.”

That’s the last thing she thinks she saw; she doesn’t even know whether the interaction with Hermann came before or after she was on a rooftop watching jaegers fall. For all she knows… she’s the last human alive. 

If she even counts as a human anymore. She’s curled up in a ball in a memory of a lab thats long gone by now, the last human left, and all that’s left is the shattered mess of a  _ fucking  _ idiot who didn’t know when to stop. 

Newt doesn’t even realise she’s started crying until she’s sobbing. It’s too much. Everything is too much; her thoughts, her memories, everything. She destroyed  _ everything.  _ She doesn’t even have a fucking  _ body  _ anymore, there’s no one left to apologise to, no one,  _ no one  _ is coming for her, she’s alone, she’s all alone with the monsters in her mind, and she didn’t even get to say goodbye. 

Hermann. She just left her, left her without an explanation because she couldn’t bear to face her, and look where they ended up?

Maybe she killed Hermann. Maybe she killed the woman she loved and the precursors are just holding back the memory until the opportune moment to destroy her completely. Jokes on  _ them _ . She might as well already be. Without Hermann, there’s nothing to fight for anymore. Nothing worth living as a prisoner in her own mind. No one will ever come to save her now, no matter how many hints she tries to drop into conversation. No one left to have a conversation with, or argue with over stupid, pointless things.

“Hermann…” She says into the fake room, just so she can remember what it’s like to speak with her own voice again. Her chest aches, and she doesn’t know why. Fuck, what she would do to just talk to her again. Just to see her face. Hear her speak something that isn’t a memory. She just wants to say sorry. 

_ Sorry that I abandoned you. Sorry that I stayed away. Sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to resist. Sorry that I tried to kill you. I’m so sorry, Hermann. I’m so fucking sorry. _

If there’s something left of the bond that they had, Newt hopes that she’ll be able to find her in the Drift. She hopes that Mako, and Raighleh, and Stacker, and Jake, found each other in the Drift. 

“Let me see her…” She sobs into her knees. “One last time. Please, god, let me see her.”

Maybe it was hours later, or maybe just moments, that she hears a voice. A very familiar voice. 

“Newton?”

Newt inhales, sharply, but keeps her head buried in her knees. She should have expected this. They heard her, the precursors heard her, and now they’re torturing her. Haven’t they done  _ enough? _

_ It’s not real. _ She tries to tell herself.  _ You were stupid, now they know what they can use, and they’re going to use it against you.  _

The voice gets more insistent. It’s sounds like it’s closer. She can even hear the familiar footsteps, the sound of the cane on the wooden floor. 

“ _ Newton _ !”

“No…” Newt moans quietly. “No, no, no, please… Not like this, I don’t.... It’s not real, this isn’t real, why was I so  _ stupid- _ ”

There’s a sigh of relief in front of her, and, she feels someone sit down in front of her, close enough that she can hear them breathing. 

“Newton.” The voice says again, but this time, softer. Gentler. “Newt.”

Finally, finally, she lifts her head, and fuck, if it’s really a replica, it’s a fucking perfect one.

“Is it…” She swallows, her voice thick with tears. “Is it really you?”

A stupid question, because a replica would lie. 

“I think that should be my line, don’t you?” Hermann replies and her hair is falling over her eyes just the way it used too, and there’s a soft smile on her face that’s so  _ fond _ , so  _ human,  _ that there’s no way that the precursors are replicating this. They just, can’t be.

“It’s me, I-I, Hermann, it’s really  _ me  _ but, I don’t understand, this, this isn’t real, how can you be here-?”

“I’m not sure, but,” Hermann rests a hand on her arm and, god, that little piece of contact makes Newt want to burst into tears all over again “What matters is, I’m here now.”

Newt is shaking as she reaches out and places her hand over the top of Hermann’s, trying to convince herself this is really, honest to god happening. “God, Hermann, I’m so, so sorry, I’m so f-fucking sorry, I destroyed everything, I, e-everyone is d-dead, because of me, this is all my fault, this is all my fault-”

“Newt, Newt, it’s alright. This wasn’t your fault. They didn’t complete their plan, it  _ failed _ , Newton.”

A small glimmer of something like hope, sparks in her chest. God, she hasn’t felt hopeful in a long time. 

“It, it did? Oh god, oh, thank god.” Newt lowers her head for a moment, taking deep, shuddering breaths. Hermann rests a hand on her back, and gently rubs circles into her shoulder, and Newt honestly hasn’t felt this safe for years. 

“Newton.” Hermann says, after a moment of quiet. “I’m going to get them out of your head. But you have to keep fighting them, until I can figure out a way.”

Newt’s face falls, and she starts to shake her head, hair falling over her shoulders. “H-Herm, Herm, I can’t. I’m not, I’m not strong enough.”

“You  _ are. _ ” Hermann insists, but she keeps shaking her head, her shoulders slumping, exhaustion evident in every single muscle of Newt’s body.

“I don’t know how much strength I have left… I’m so tired, Hermann, they’ve… they’ve practically won. I’m so fucking tired.”

_ “I _kno_ w _ , Newton.” Herman says, squeezing her hand. “But you’ve fought this far. Just a little longer, until we can get you back.”

Newt sighs, before looking up at her with a small smile. “You’re as stubborn as ever.”

“So are you.” When Newt rolls her eyes, Hermann admonishes her. “Really Newton. Like anyone else could take on the precursors, alone, in their own mind, and still be here ten years later. I told you our debates would be good for something.”

“Uh, first, they were very much arguments, and two, I seem to remember you making an official complaint because the arguments were distracting you from your work.”

“I never did that!” Hermann says, indignantly.

“You did, I remember the damn paperwork!”

“How do you remember the paperwork if I never filed it in the first place?”

“Then how do you explain it ended up on my desk with a rejected stamp from HR?”

Hermann opens her mouth to reply, and then catches sight of Newt’s expression. “What?” 

“I really fucking missed you, Herm.” Newt says, feeling tears welling up in her eyes.

Hermann smiles. “I missed you too.” 

_ If this was a movie,  _ Newt thought, _ this would be the moment. _

Hermann, of course, has never heard of dramatic timing, or certain movie cliches, and instead, pulls her into a hug. 

It’s the best damn hug Newt’s had in ten years. She’s so busy hugging her, that she doesn’t notice Hermann’s quick fingers in her hair, and when she pulls back, she finds that her hair is no longer loose around her shoulders. Instead it’s up in a practical, if messy, ponytail.

Hermann nods, as if satisfied. “Now, you look more like yourself.”

“Thank you.” Newt says, and she hates how her voice cracks at the last syllable, but it doesn’t really matter, because, whatever this is, Hermann is here, she’s here and she’s going to get her out.

“What a touching reunion.”

The voice comes from behind Hermann, from the entrance to their lab, and  _ oh god  _ **_no-_ **

_ She’s _ standing there. Newt is looking at a perfect copy of herself and, judging by Hermann’s sharp intake of breath, she can see it too. 

Well. It's not exactly a perfect copy. Newt is vaguely aware that she's wearing a battered white shirt, rolled up at the sleeves to expose her tattoos, and whatever part of her mind she still has control over has put her in the clothes she's always been more comfortable in.

The copy in front of her, however, is wearing a dark suit, sleeves rolled down. To Newt, it looks like someone has done a bad job of trying to imitate her. It's hair is deliberately straightened, loose, the sign of someone who hasn't been in a lab for a long time. The waistcoat is extravagantly patterned, but it's dark, much too dark. She hasn't worn all black since her teenage years and her first doctorate and even then she liked to add a little colour. Even the expression on the copy's face is  _ wrong.  _ She really hopes that her face has never looked so cold, so cruel. She's not even wearing her glasses. 

Newt backs herself up as far as she can go, hands scrabbling on the floor. “No, no, no, no, go away, get  _ away _ !”

Hermann, that wonderful, stubborn,  _ ridiculous _ idiot, stands, facing the copy, cane out in front of her like a weapon, threatening even as she leans onto it.

“I won't let you touch her.” She says. 

“Hermann, Herm, don't-” 

The copy of her laughs. “Like she ever listened to your advice, Herrrrrmann.” She drags out the word, the smile never disappearing from her face as she looks Newt directly in the eyes.

“Newt, Newt, Newt, did you really think that this pathetic excuse for a human could stand against us? This one is even more pathetic than you, and that's really saying something.”

“Don't listen to it, Newton.” Hermann snaps. 

“Oh, but she already has.” The copy leans forward, hands behind her back. “How do you think she got into this mess? All of this is her fault. Her  _ fault. _ ”

Newt’s voice is quiet, staring up at her double. “I didn't mean it…”

“I didn't mean it’ is different to 'I didn't do it’. You did do it. You did all of this.”

The copy waves one hand, and suddenly Newt is kneeling in the middle of a ruined Tokyo. Rebar, rubble and broken glass surround her in every direction; skyscrapers have collapsed, and her throat is full of dust and ash in the air.

“No…” She whispers, feeling her stomach drop with fear. “No, no I didn't-”

Already she can feel her head spinning from a lack of oxygen, unable to breathe, her vision blurring in front of her even as she  _ knows  _ that it isn't real.

And then, Hermann is kneeling in front of her, and she's all that Newt can see. 

“This wasn't your fault, Newton. This wasn't  _ you. _ They did this, it was all them.”

She wants to believe her. She wants to believe her so desperately, but there's another voice in her ear, and tight hands on her shoulders that aren't Hermann’s.

“Now, Hermann, that won't do at  _ all _ . Let's finish what  _ we _ started.”

And a pair of hands, long black sleeves hiding colourful tattoos, reach out for Hermann's neck.

“No!” Newt is surprised by her own strength, the loudness of her shout as she twists herself around, pushing Hermann back and  _ away _ , because she  _ won't  _ let this happen again, she won't be so weak to hurt Hermann again.

She has to protect her. She  _ has  _ to. She hasn't even be able to protect herself at all, but, fuck, if there is one thing she is going to do, she will protect  _ her.  _

Newt catches a glimpse of Hermann’s horrified expression, before Hermann just blinks out of existence in the wreckage of Tokyo, and a hand tightens itself around Newt's throat in the Shatterdome’s lab.

“You don't get to resist us!” Her double screams, pulling her up, off the floor with inhuman strength. Dazed, she can’t help but think - have these guys been working out while they’ve been in her body? 

Then she realises that she doesn’t have the oxygen left to think, let alone ponder on things that don’t matter, as she scrambles desperately at the hands around her neck,  _ her hands.  _

“You are  **_nothing!”_ ** Their voice expands, the hivemind’s voices overlapping her own. “ **_You and your planet are nothing! We will take everything from you!”_ **

Newt’s legs kick into nothing, finding herself being lifted off the ground entirely. 

“Please...!” She gasps out, her view of the laboratory around her blurring. 

_ “She is lying to you! You cannot fight us.  _ **_You will not fight us!”_ **

Newt tries to choke out a “No-” but it’s cut off as the double pulls her closer, forcing her to look herself in the eye, which, if this isn't an absolute fucking nightmare, would be fucking weird. 

**_“No one is coming for you!”_ **

Her consciousness was starting to fade. Whatever happens now, Hermann had been here. She was content with that. She had seen her one last time, and that was enough for her.

Except…

Hermann wanted her to fight.  Hermann was going to keep fighting to try and get her _.  _ How much of a fucking awful person would she be if she gave up now, and Hermann found there was nothing left of her to save? She couldn’t do that to her. She’d already hurt her enough.

She hadn’t believed in anything for so long. But now, if there was one thing she believed in… it was her. 

Summoning all her strength, she lifts one leg and kicks out, not even knowing if she’s aiming in the right direction. 

Her foot connects with something, and she feels a jabbing pain in her own stomach, but that didn’t matter as she was thrown unceremoniously to the ground, her double snarling. 

**_“You’re pitiful!”_ ** It sneers, as it glares down at her.  **_“You can’t win!”_ **

_ No.  _ Newt thought, her vision swimming.  _ But she can. _

As if they could hear her thoughts (and, they probably could, they were in her head, after all) the double appears in her field of vision. 

“She can’t save you.” It says, in a mocking tone. “She’s as weak as the rest of your pitiful kind. And…” It leans closer, even as Newt’s vision gets darker. “If she tries… Well,  _ you  _ let us in. So will she.”

Newt wants to say something, wants to argue back, shout, scream,  _ anything.  _ They can’t take her. They  _ can’t. _

All she can do instead, is sink back into that gaping void of kaiju blue.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, feel free to hit me up at marianne-dash-wood.tumblr.com!
> 
> I now have a Pacific Rim side-blog! gay-uprising.tumblr.com!


End file.
